40 ACRES is a 2024 post-apocalyptic movie, set 12 years after a fungal infection killed all the animals, causing civilization to collapse. It centers on Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler, THE HARDER THEY FALL) and her family, who grow corn and weed on their farm, which they protect fiercely and skillfully. In the opening some raiders show up (mostly white, mostly rednecks), maybe thinking the Freemans will be pushovers, but at first they can’t even find them. They just hear them whistling. Next thing they know they’re being shot and sliced and chased through the corn field. When it’s over we see that even the Freeman kids were part of the battle, and they’re very proud of their headshots.

We notice some trepidation from big brother Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor, TIME CUT), though. He unmasks the last one he shot and is clearly bothered that it was a young woman. Then she turns out to be alive and he hesitates to finish the job. But his mom orders him to, so he does it.

Emanual has younger sisters named Danis (Jaeda LeBlanc, MOMMY’S LITTLE PRINCESS) and Cookie (Haile Amare) and then I believe Raine (Leenah Robinson, 1923), who’s great with the sniper rifle, is their stepsister, the daughter of stepdad Galen (Michael Greyeyes, FIRESTORM). I know Greyeyes from another interesting Canadian post-apocalyptic settlement movie – the zombie picture BLOOD QUANTUM – but he’s a very different character here. The kids all love Galen – he’s nice and teaches them Cree and brings them guns and other presents from his scavenging runs – but Hailey’s not as warm. We think she’s a cool badass ‘cause we just have to watch her in a movie, but when she’s your mom she’s very strict, and they all seem afraid of her. She assigns them homework and makes them do pushups as punishment and they have to call her ma’am. It’s a little like the Sullys in AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER, actually. She can be funny when she’s flipping them shit, but more often she gives them that cold, serious Danielle Deadwyler eye and tells them to do better.

Despite all that, Hailey does have at least one friend. One of her duties is listening to the radio to hear communications between other families. There are scary stories going around about farms being attacked, blood everywhere, no bodies found. Cannibals. Hailey just listens, doesn’t say anything, until she gets shouted out by a white lady named Augusta (Elizabeth Saunders, THE SHROUDS). Hailey likes to tell Augusta “Bitch, you don’t know me,” but we quickly come to realize that she pretty much means the opposite. They have a trade relationship – Hailey’s weed for Augusta’s moonshine – but you can tell just over the radio that they’re buddies too. It’s very sweet.

I liked 40 ACRES but I imagine I would’ve liked it more if I hadn’t, for some reason, watched the entirety of The Walking Dead. You can judge me for that, I don’t blame you. But there’s alot of stuff in here that’s especially familiar if you’ve watched that show: fenced off communities that don’t trust outsiders, kids trained to shoot people in the head like it’s nothing, communicating with other settlements over the radio, even raids by bands of cannibals. After 11 seasons of that you don’t necessarily need to see another story about how human nature is bad and you might have to do some horrible things to survive when the shit goes down. The show was more about that kind of stuff than it was about zombies, but it’s still not a plus to not have zombies.

This still worked for me, though, because I became attached to this family and the last act especially brings them into many tense and exciting situations. And there definitely are some nice details to the world that do add some flavor even if they aren’t enough to make it feel totally new for the genre. Speaking of adding flavor, one of those touches is that Galen finds a collection of spices and acts like he struck gold.

I also like the weed for moonshine business (though I don’t think we ever see them smoking it?). I am personally not a smoker but I might consider it after an apocalypse. I like that the Freemans have developed their own traditions, like a coming of age ceremony involving an oath and fire and face paint. I’m sure it’s at least partly based in Galen’s heritage but my sense is that they adapted a variety of traditions into something of their own. I guess it’s cool either way. Galen wants to keep his culture alive, including through the language. (I wonder if he has tried rapping, like in KNEECAP?)

I think maybe the most unusual part of the worldbuilding is kinda subtle: this lack of animals. It’s pointed out at the beginning but I mostly didn’t think about it. Then when I go back through the movie in my mind I realize there weren’t birds flying over, they didn’t have a dog, they didn’t ride horses. I’d kinda forgotten about it by the time a massacre was described as looking like an attack by wild animals and Galen said, “I think people forget what animals were like.”

Yeah, the title is just 40 ACRES, because you know you’re not gonna get a mule. This is a Canadian movie, and I guess it is set in Canada despite the title and the reference to a “second civil war” and a “Union Army.” Canadians have to deal with all our baggage just from being next door, I guess. Sorry, Canada. This is a story of the future but obviously there are allusions to history, with the family’s surname and details of their background relating to freed slaves and their descendants who owned property, and the mostly white raiders echoing the many massacres committed against Black towns to prevent them from succeeding. I’m not sure you can even call it subtext, because Hailey straight up cites this history as the reason she’ll never trust the army even if they’re currently the good guys. It would be hard to miss any of that in the movie but I don’t think they rub it on too thick (or, for that matter, explore it very deeply). It’s more of an interesting context for a story and set of characters than a message, I think. But you can take it as either.

This is the first theatrical feature for R.T. Thorne, a Canadian director of music videos (DJ Khaled Feat. Drake & Lil Baby: Staying Alive) and TV (Degrassi: The Next Generation, Degrassi: The Next Class). He wrote it with Glenn Taylor (no other credits) and Lora Campbell (5 episodes of Yoga 101). I’ll watch his next one if it sounds cool like this, but the real moral of the story is bring on more Danielle Deadwyler vehicles.